I found
the shadow
carpeted with
ache
I couldn’t
leave the
island of my
skin
unable
to break and free
as a sky without
zenith, I sunk
into a low and
blue tear
then morning hung
as the erotic
fluvial voice
this mouth is a gash
that never heals
thrusting verbs as blood
in the bloating thought
I look down
to find my shape
covered in otherness
I was there
alloyed WITH
the world
like
the élan and heart
together
in immeasurable desire.
it may be . . .
that nothing can be understood
that trees make waves of transparent flying ointment
birds fluttering wings in atomic curls of laughter
a pebble the size of pain sinking in the stomach
of minds with no hands sculpting the invisible thought
a hole in the ground where we plant a bone
so it blooms like a flower of striped fire
confusing the stars for our parents
and pale dry flakes of sin as our former selves
the hand making shadows on the empty wall of time
where nothing can be changed and we sit
on sidewalks oozing the ancient bubbles of speech
mirroring the breath of drying tobacco fields
and swimming where the saliva twirls in gold desire
because we did not control the first kiss
that enamored us with fatal bliss of birth
that ends in destined death
it may be . . .
that nothing can be understood
My only desire
is to see
a stream of existence
fall through azure
at contact point
the intact reserves
of the world
sprouting
like the bubbles
at the end
of your pee.
I release a deep breath
unawares of anything
I’ve been away
weaving dreams
like a curing madness
the petty circumference of my desire
impels me to
move
not one finger
an inertia comparable
to an everlasting god
that has lived a thousand infinities,
in the deepest streets
in the coldest thoughts
I am a reckless survivor
dreaming in poetry
as a small pebble
tucked away
under the entire
weight
of the universe.
I turn my head
finally
after days:
the streets are covered with snow.
I’ve been unaware
like the boy
quietly placing a dot
after every sentence
of lyrical self-absorption:
the consequence
of being
irrelevant.
If we must submit to the irrationality of following all logic to its end, conclusions may turn shockingly paradoxical. I once heard that we have chosen our life from the very start and that our experience on this planet is simply the revelation of our original choice. If this were true then the absurdity of our suffering would be justified since we have chosen beforehand to experience it. The question that remains would be: why have we forgotten our original choice? Why does life present itself as an unknown unfolding instead of being the realization of one’s desire? By some obscure mechanism our original choice has been obliterated, life remains a permanent surprise. At first this seems like another form of fatalism except for the fact that we have chosen that predetermination. On the other hand, most people believe that the universe is a spontaneous happening and we must choose our way through the hazards of spontaneity. Our life is the result of all our choices, but how do we ever get to choose anything? I sat down the other day to think this one over and I discovered that my choices are really just reactions to whatever is presented to my mind. From the pettiest choices to the most important decisions I simply obey a feeling, logic or a whim. In all of these cases I am subject to what simply happens inside me. Should I buy a black or blue pen? I wait for a moment, experience a certain sensation of pleasure in black and I buy the black pen. Should I live in Costa Rica or in India, I wait for a moment, a logical-emotional labyrinth emerges in my mind and by the end of this involuntary frenzy, I make my decision. Naively speaking, thoughts are like emotions, they arise involuntarily and by a law of their own. Most people are identified with their thoughts, but if you ask them how they fabricate a thought they must inevitably answer: it simply happens. So, if my decisions are nothing but reactions to what is presented to my mind, what is allowing these perceptions? If we submit to modern scientific thinking, to explain a perception in the human mind we must pursue a long path through Psychology, Sociology, Biology, Evolution, Neurology, Chemistry, Physics, and we will end up with an ultimate theory for the universe as seen by man. In very simple terms, what we experience is the result of the whole arrangement of the cosmos, and if we knew every bit of information about this arrangement, we could predict ourselves. Again, we fall into an unremitting fatalism.
But what’s the use of all this reasoning and the contemporary compulsive adoration to logic and reason?
I choose not to know.
“Puppet on a string” by Steve Whitney
Are we as free as we think we are?
The problem of Free Will is inextricably linked with a scientific belief. This belief is in itself perhaps older than formal science but nonetheless it acquired great force with the birth and development of the scientific enterprise. It can be stated thus:
Everything in the present is the direct result of the configuration of the past.
Nothing is without a cause. Thus, whatever we encounter in a present state can be explained or understood by its former state and the natural laws involved. If this belief is to be adopted thoroughly, if nothing can escape causality, then anything we experience has a direct cause in the past.
When we bring this kind of reasoning to the debate of Free Will, we can conclude in the following manner:
Psychic phenomena all have a cause regulated and governed by natural biological laws that at present we cannot name them all. Whatever we experience in the present is inextricably linked to a past state of affairs.
We understand Free Will as the ability to make an act or decision independently of any necessity compelling us to choose one thing over another. Stated this way it seems that the act of choosing has escaped the law of causality. But if this is to be rejected by our common scientific understanding of the world, we arrive at a different conclusion. Any decision-making process is only possible when the individual is in a particular situation where (s)he reacts to the evidence or stimuli presented for making a decision or act. This stimulus is the psychic content, patent or latent, that takes part of the decision-making moment. To pick an apple over a banana is the result of the apparition in the individual’s consciousness of past experience with these fruits, past reactions to these that make one fruit preferable over the other. A decision cannot be achieved without the pre-existent conditions for making a decision; that is to say: desire in the individual for eating (something that is quite involuntary), the past experience with the objects and objectives of the decision or act. Bound to memory, expectation, desire, and many other, the decision-making process is dependent on psychic phenomena that arises in the mind without a conscious or voluntary action. When an act of “Free Will” has taken place we remember the act, and the possibility of choosing otherwise, but we forget the requirements for us to arrive at the chosen action. The action was conditioned by involuntary psychic phenomena, something which we do not control and therefore acted out of a necessity towards this stimuli that was presented to us: Desire, Aversion, Memory, Imagination, Etc.
In such a way the problem of Free Will can be reconciled with the idea of causality. And with this knowledge now in mind the upcoming decisions will be influenced by this new awareness. We may doubt at the moment of decision-making in order to prove our putative freedom, but we are still only reactions to involuntary psychic phenomena that permit the processes we call free and voluntary.
However, to understand the laws of the human psyche at the present seems unlikely because of the complexity involved; the apparent arbitrariness or spontaneity of the stimuli that allow our decisions to take place is sufficient to permit our current morality – based on the supposition that we are free agents making responsible decisions – to remain established.
::::::::::::: APPENDIX ::::::::::::::::
The main idea behind this short inquiry is to reconcile two basic assumptions we have about the world.
1. Everything is the effect of a cause. Therefore all effects can potentially be explained or understood by their causes. (A general accepted supposition in our contemporary scientific culture)
2. We are free agents, making decisions independently of any external necessity obligating us to make a certain choice.
These two assumptions we all have in the back of our minds are in stark contradiction. How can we be free if everything in the world is determined by natural laws and follow an unchangeable course? We then would be part of the immutable course of things and all our actions are predetermined since the beginning of time.
If we follow the suggestions of logic, we will conclude that we are nothing but puppets manipulated by the general course of nature’s laws. However, we don’t feel this to be the case. We feel we ARE free and independent.
The above paragraphs attempt to show that we may be deceived by our belief in Free Will. Simply stated, our decisions are not made by an omnipotent-omniscient ego that at each moment can decide what it wills. Our decisions are based and chained to mental phenomena that arise involuntarily into our consciousness (that is to say it appears quite without our consent, as a cloud would appear suddenly in an open sky). This involuntary phenomena (desire, aversion, fear, tribulation, excitement, anxiety, and countless others) determine the choices we make. Our choices have natural causes that do not depend on us. With this explanation we can find causes for our decision-making lives and discover that we are not as commonly believed: free creators of our destinies.
However, if we can find reason to doubt the first assumption: everything has a cause by which we can know the effect, then Free Will may be conceived without logical contradiction. And it is wise to reassess our dogmatic belief in science and the principles of causality, which may be in the end altogether mistaken.
A black umbrella
my sky
The moon
another street-lamp
Sleeping houses
populate my horizon
Following the curvature of a continent
the window is my pillow
My eyes
magnets attracting
the elements of the unknown.
If the clouds
scatter and break the sky asunder
into a thousand little islands,
If on top of trees
the world below would not be so strange
I would visit every cumulus bay
every rising branch…
How far must a man go
to find out what he seeks?
Beyond Language 
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